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To: Ruffian who wrote (308054)	6/1/2009 1:44:36 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793925

Another voice from "part of the problem" Nader Statement On GM Bankruptcy breitbart.com WASHINGTON, June 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Consumer advocate Ralph Nader today issued the following statement on GM's bankruptcy filing: Today's bankruptcy declaration in federal court by General Motors is an avoidable, crude weapon of mass devastation for workers, dealers, auto suppliers, small businesses and their depleted communities. For GM's voiceless owners -- the common shareholders -- it is a wipeout. The proximate cause of the bankruptcy was supposed to be the inability of GM and the government's auto task force to reach an accommodation with GM's bondholders. But late last week, the bondholder problem was moving toward rapid resolution, and was clearly resolvable. Why then are GM and its multibillion government financier proceeding with bankruptcy? The bankruptcy and the GM restructuring plan are the product of a secretive, unaccountable, Wall Street-minded government task force that assumed power because of a Congressional abdication of historic magnitude. By all rights, the restructuring plan should have been submitted to Congress for deliberative review and decision. There is little doubt that GM's chronic mismanagement and the deep recession require restructuring and scaling back the auto giant. But the bankruptcy and restructuring plan appear poised to do so in ways that will needlessly harm the stakeholders meant to be helped by Washington's rescue of GM? Many, many jobs will be lost that could be preserved. There is reason to question whether too many plants and brands are being closed -- a matter that should have been taken up in Congress. Just the closing of hundreds of (GM and Chrysler) dealerships will cost more than 100,000 jobs. These sacrificed jobs will fray communities and impose enormous expenses on government entities that will have to provide unemployment and social relief, while suffering lost tax revenues. The unionized workforce will see the wage and benefit structure slashed -- even though auto manufacturer wages make up less than 10 percent of the cost of a car -- so that new jobs at GM will no longer be a ticket to the middle class. This will drag down the wage structure of the entire auto industry -- exactly the wrong direction for the country. America's manufacturing base will be further eroded, as GM pursues its Grand China Strategy -- increasing manufacturing outside of the United States, and increasingly from China, for import back into the United States. Unanswered questions persist about how GM's valuable operations in China, and unrepatriated profits, will be treated in bankruptcy, or excluded from bankruptcy. Victims of defective GM products may find themselves with no legal avenue to pursue justice. In the Chrysler bankruptcy, with complete disregard for the real human lives involved, the Obama task force and auto company have maneuvered effectively to extinguish the product liability claims of victims of defective cars. In a worst case scenario for the GM bankruptcy -- involving an extended court proceeding or severe impairment of consumer confidence in the GM brand -- all of these problems will be magnified. Again, given the path to resolution with the bondholders, this is an avoidable gamble. The GM/task force bankruptcy plans appear geared to saving the General Motors entity -- but at a harsh and often avoidable cost to workers, communities, suppliers, consumers, dealers, and the nation's manufacturing capacity. It will also prove to be a complex political nightmare for President Obama. With the company entering bankruptcy, the next challenge will be to ensure that the government exercises its ownership rights to undo and mitigate, to the extent possible, these damages. Among other measures, this should involve revisiting the serious drag-down, concessionary wage terms imposed on the United Auto Workers; demanding a moratorium on GM's outsourcing of production of cars for sale in the United States; and establishing successorship liability for the new GM, so that victims of dangerous and defective GM cars can have their day in court. SOURCE Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate

To: Ruffian who wrote (308054)	6/1/2009 2:25:59 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793925

Wanting him to be wrong: RICHARD MILLER: First GM, Next America By Richard Miller Author, “In Word and Deeds: Battle Speeches In History” foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com May 31st, 2009 9:54 PM Eastern It was said once that what was good for General Motors was good for America. I would update that aphorism: what is happening to General Motors is happening to America. Some of this is a bitter necessity–but much of it will be very bad, brought on by the voting public’s collective refusal to face the consequences of our nation’s (and our own) increasingly reckless financial behavior over the past three decades. ————— The truth is that the president is just doing with GM what we, the people elected him to do: manage America’s decline and do it gently, painlessly, without seeming to abandon the old tropes of American Greatness. ————— First, about that which is necessary. The key word here is “deleveraging.” GM, like many other corporations, homeowners, and credit card borrowers simply incurred too much debt. Most of GM’s debt was self-inflicted–ordinary borrowing. But much of the most damaging debt was simply conspiratorial. Unions and management had few incentives to control the former’s spiraling wages, benefits and pensions while the latter had to avoid strikes and keep the machine running in order to earn its rich salaries and bonuses. As for shareholders and bondholders, as long as GM played its own Ponzi game of being current on debt service, and as long as the stock rose in the general equity mania of the last generation, few asked many questions. Meanwhile, the only market that really counted — the domestic auto market — had been shrinking steadily for GM since the early 1970s. And the government (us, of course) was fond of its CAFEs, EPAs, OSHAs and other regulatory burdens that it imposed on the company. It all added up to what you now see unfolding before your eyes. And what is very bad about GM’s situation? The Obama administration, in the name of the public good but in the fact of political payoff, has paid billions and pledged upwards of $50 billion dollars to a company that has failed to raise one dime of private capital. And all this done without querying GM exactly what it will do differently to compete with Mercedes, Toyota or even Ford. Do you know what will be different? Please comment if you do because despite studying this GM for years, I don’t have a clue. Now here’s the surprise: I don’t blame Obama one bit. Sure, he broke his campaign pledge against Washington “politics as usual” by giving us Chicago “politics as usual.” In this case Alderman Obama delivered to his ward bosses at the UAW. But the truth is that the president is just doing with GM what we, the people elected him to do: manage American decline and do it gently, painlessly, without seeming to abandon the old tropes of American Greatness. We, the public, wanted to avoid the pain that the logic of our (former) economic and social system would have required of GM: file a non-government subsidized bankruptcy petition, and hope that the washed through assets would actually be acquired by some guy with a better idea on how to build cars. “Too big to fail,” we said in our collective arrogance. Too much pain. Too many suppliers forced out of business, too many workers unemployed, too many pensioners struggling to survive on reduced benefits. All probably true, and all part of the economic logic that built this country. Brutal, yes, but when you see the pain that the Indians and Chinese are willing to bear in order to supplant us as world leaders, you may remember that it’s a price our ancestors bore when America was ascendant. The truth is that as a nation, we’re no longer “up to it,” the “it” being the costs associated with world leadership. We, GM and America have entered our dotage. Obama isn’t the problem, he’s just a symptom. (And to demonstrate how non-partisan this is, remember that it was Republican Bush ‘43 and his trusty sidekick “Help U.S.” Hank Paulson who argued for Detroit’s first $25 billion as well as $700 billion in TARP funds. It was at that very moment that Old America was declared dead and gone by its elites. All Obama has done is turn up the volume on the same song.) As a lifelong Republican, I’d love to bash the loyal opposition. But not this time. As a collective group we elected Obama to stop the pain. By making General Motors in effect a new department of the federal government, Obama, by deferring the pain to the Chinese government’s willingness to buy our bonds, has only done what we asked him to do. Managing America’s decline–it’s only a secret inside this country.